


chasing the clouds away

by weird_bird (2weird4)



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Adopted Sibling Relationship, Autumn, Damian confirmed for the worst, Gen, Humor, Social Media, Ugly Sweaters, fashion is fake, statistically too many redheads, this is the silliest thing I've ever written
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-09-01 18:51:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8634049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2weird4/pseuds/weird_bird
Summary: “Is that–-cat hair?”“No.” Damian’s scowl deepens. “Yes.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, it's a crack fic about cat sweaters.
> 
> Yeah, the title is from ["September."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs069dndIYk)
> 
> Part of my attempt to transfer all my fic over from my tumblrs and Google Drive to AO3.

Dick turns to Damian to relay some information about the man they’re chasing and his nose twitches. Twitches again. Then he sneezes so hard he nearly knocks himself off the narrow ledge where they’re perched.

Damian jumps, too (Dick always sneezes loud and Damian always jumps). He pretends he didn’t, of course, sports an indignant scowl when Dick turns back to him.

Swiping his glove over his nose with all the manners of a man who grew up in a mansion, Dick squints at him from behind his domino. There’s something on Damian’s black leggings. “Is that–-cat hair?”

“No.” Damian’s scowl deepens. “Yes.”

With a last sniffle and crinkle of the nose, Dick grabs his grappling hook again. “All right, Catlad. Let’s go catch our guy.”

 

“I got you something.”

Damian’s suspicious expression makes Dick grin. He’ll trust him with what matters most, but when it comes to presents wrapped lumpily (lovingly!) in yellow paper and gifted with no special occasion attached, all faith goes out the window.

Still, though, Damian peels it open slow. Dick’s seen him do the same with oranges and eggs. So cautious not to damage anything delicate underneath with blunt nails. A careless boy so careful. Years have brought him patience. Have gentled the edges of his humor, too.

All the same, he’s unsmiling when he lifts the gift out of the paper.

It’s a masterwork of kitsch. Tight-woven cotton, eye-searing orange. The biggest, blockiest, ugliest possible applique on the front. The eyes are uneven. The tail’s texture is fluffy.

“A cat sweater?” Damian hisses. Between blinks, he flings it at Dick’s face.

Laughing, Dick fights his way out of the fabric. “Does this mean you won’t wear it?”

“Tt.” That’s as much of a non-answer as always. Damian stomps past, making an impressive amount of noise for bare feet on the floor.

As he goes, he snatches the sweater off Dick’s head. It’s a brief taste of victory for Dick.

Very, very brief.

 

 

Damian’s not consistently on social media. His online stints every few months do, however, generate weeks’ worth of Buzzfeed content. “5 Pictures of Jerry the Turkey That’ll Make You Rethink Thanksgiving Dinner,” “Top 10 Shadiest Damian Wayne Tweets.”

Dick checks his phone over coffee and sees Damian’s latest from the source for once.

Instagram, oddly artful photo of Alfred the cat curled up on Damian’s chest. And Alfred the cat’s got his paw on–that horrible cat applique on that horrible cat sweater.

It’s captioned “this one’s for grayson.”

Dick snorts into his coffee and doesn’t think much more of it.

 

 

“‘Normcore Meets Industrial Goth?’” Nonplussed, Dick leans back and rereads the title off his laptop screen. It doesn’t make any more sense the second time around. Neither does Damian’s outfit. “I don’t know what those words mean.”

“‘Youngest Wayne Steps Out in Style,’” Donna reads over his shoulder. “Is that the cat sweater you got him?” It’s not, actually, and that’s what’s driving him crazy. “Your brother is so cute.” He has a few arguments against that built up right now, actually.

“Normcore isn’t a real trend.” Wally blurs past and then leans over the armrest. “It’s kinda like–manufactured by the media in lieu of a real youth movement, you know?”

“Kids these days.” Donna eyeballs him, amused. “Why do you know this?”

“Wikipedia spiral.” Wally shakes his head and sinks down into the couch at Dick’s side. “Sweater aside, I like those shoes.” He gestures to the heavy dark boots Damian’s wearing in the picture as he stands on the steps leading up to the library with Colin at his elbow. “Where’d you get that sweater, anyway?”

Dick closes his laptop. “Thrift. And those boots would have more holes than soles on you within an hour, anyway.”

“Let a guy down easy, Dick.”

 

 

He’s going to buy a sweater so ugly that even Damian in full-troll mode wouldn’t consider buying it, he decides. Surely his dignity would kick back in soon.

Roy comes with-–why, Dick doesn’t know. Despite how long he’s known Roy, Dick rarely knows why he does anything. And Lian’s here, so it’s a good time.

It’s a good time, but it’s not a success. “I swear there was a shelf of them before.” His hands skim fruitlessly over pilly cardigans and puffy coats. “There’s just nothing left here.”

“I wouldn’t say ‘nothing.’” Roy’s holding up something in crushed maroon velvet fringed with lace to his waist and Lian’s giggling. Dick’s distracted from watching them fondly by a voice. He hadn’t noticed anyone else in here.

“So you could, like, alter it, right?” The voice is that of a young woman with an uppercrust Gotham accent.

Dick looks up curiously and sees a slim girl with elegant tight braids close to her head and glossy heels. Doesn’t look like the kind of person who’d frequent one of Gotham’s least trendy neighborhoods. She’s holding up a sweater to her chest and talking to her friend.

When she turns, Dick sees what he expected despite his incredulity. A cat picked out in neon pink embroidery on the front, face in rhinestone. It’s gaudy. It’s awful. He’s tempted to buy it off her arm.

Perhaps he should have, he reflects as they push their way out into the nippy fall air. A stray yellow leaf skates around their ankles as he and Roy walk on either side of Lian.

Dick reaches down to adjust Lian’s scarf and then a thought strikes him. “Hey, I bet you can’t count more cat sweaters than me.”

“Bet I can!” she says immediately, her father’s daughter.

By the time they get back to Dick’s apartment, noses and ears pink with chill, Dick claims five. Lian gleefully counts seven. He’s glad someone’s having fun.

 

 

It comes to a head when Kory invites Dick to a fashion show. Most of it baffles him, of course, but Kory looks devastatingly gorgeous and giggles at the faces he makes, so it’s not so bad.

Yet another willowy model struts down the runway and Dick’s only half-paying attention as she makes a sharp turn. His eyes are caught by a flash of multicolored light.

She’s wearing a cat sweater. Nothing but a cat sweater, actually, halfway down her thighs. It’s so hideous it’s almost artful. Flashing rainbow lights and silver pom-poms and polka dots and stripes.

“I’d wear it,” Kory murmurs to him.

“Betrayal,” he mutters back.

At the after party, he spots a very familiar figure by the hors d’oeuvres. “Damian? What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here, Grayson? I didn’t think you had an eye for fashion. You don’t even know that you’re a winter.” He pops a squash blossom into his mouth. He’s wearing a very nice suit with shiny cufflinks and looking unusually smug, even for Damian.

A winter? Dick decides he’s not even going to go there. “Can you believe everyone’s still all over this cat thing when you’re already over it?”

Damian raises dark eyebrows. He lifts his wrists. “Who’s over anything?”

“Are you ever going to let me win?” Dick’s grinning despite himself, eyes rolling to the ceiling.

Damian shrugs. “Admit it, Grayson, you have more fun losing.” He shakes out his sleeves with the silver cat cufflinks and grins like, well. The cat who got the cream.


End file.
